CCI order probe against Google for its alleged abuse of dominance in news aggregation

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Friday issued orders for an investigation against Google and its parent company Alphabet. According to the order issued by the commission, after studying the complaints of news publishers across the country, the commission prima facie believes that Google has broken many laws.

In the order, the CCI said that since Google has a monopoly on online search, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Google may have imposed unfair conditions on news publishers. The complainant, Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), claims that they have been denied fair advertising revenue by Google.

CCI said, the role of media is important in maintaining democracy. But, Google is using the dominant position to maintain its dominance in the news aggregation service market.

“No doubt, Google, being the gateway, generates substantial traffic for news publishers, but at the same time, the bargaining power imbalance and denial of fair share in the advertising revenue, as alleged by the Informant, merit detailed investigation,” the Commission said.

The DNPA had complained last year about the grabbing of advertising revenue by online aggregators like Google. The CCI in its order also referred to the new rules in France and Australia, which forced Google to enter into billion-dollar license deals with local news publishers.

Accordingly, the CCI has directed the Director General (DG) to carry out an investigation into the matter under the provisions of Section 26(1) of the Act. The CCI will also examine allegations that Google gives content publishers no choice, but to implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) standard or lose critical placement in mobile search. The DG has been asked to complete the investigation within 60 days.

The DNPA said in the complaint that when their content is searched on the Internet, more than 50 percent people use Google for it. Through Google algorithms, it decides which website will appear first when it searches for any news or information. Apart from this, Google retains a large part of the advertising revenue received on their website, while the purpose of the advertiser is to promote itself through the website owned by the content. In this way Google violates various provisions of Section 4 of the CCI Act.

The complaint pointed out that news publishers across the country have been largely dependent on advertising revenue for a long time. In the era of the digital economy, the share of traditional advertising is declining, while news publishers are spending more on digitization. The share of digital advertising in the advertising sector has increased from 19 per cent to 31 per cent in the last three years. News publishers are completely dependent on Google for digital advertising. But, Google arbitrarily distributes advertising revenue.